Best money you've ever spent

Going back to school for a degree in Nursing. Nothing else has paid off so quickly and so rewardingly.

Every $2.49 I spend on Rain-X brand washer fluid. Cleans well, dries spot-free, and water-repellent treats my windshield.

Bought a dress jacket in a thrift store once for $5 that had a $20 bill and a yarmulke in the pocket. Wore that for a while.

Bought a new pair of khakis off the bargain rack at the Gap for $3.50 in about 1990. Wore those things for about 10 years. I have a cheap closeout t-shirt from Duluth Trading that was around $5 in maybe 2000. I still wear it. And I'm tough on clothes, in general.

KyAllroad wrote: LASIK. Hands down the best thing ever.

+Eleventy

I don't even just consider it cosmetic. It's a luxury, but a practical one. Don't have to futz with glasses anymore. Very handy when doing lots of activities that require helmets. Invaluable working in the brewery when I don't need to worry about glasses fogging up all the time and I can wear any style of safety glasses or goggles I want.

Figure it should be a near break-even investment when factoring in how many pairs of custom glasses I will never have to buy for the rest of my life.

Duke wrote: Every $2.49 I spend on Rain-X brand washer fluid. Cleans well, dries spot-free, and water-repellent treats my windshield.

Interesting, I'll have to keep an eye out for this stuff.

KyAllroad wrote: LASIK. Hands down the best thing ever. Bookended interestingly by another cosmetic surgery. The worst investment, by miles, was boobs for the wife. That one cost me high six figures all told.

I'll have to get ablative laser surgery myself sometime in the next few years.

No boobs are worth 6 digits though Well, maybe if they cured cancer and were tattooed with the designs for a practical fusion power plant.

tuna55 wrote:

KyAllroad wrote: LASIK. Hands down the best thing ever. Bookended interestingly by another cosmetic surgery. The worst investment, by miles, was boobs for the wife. That one cost me high six figures all told.

that story still makes me genuinely sad for your situation.

Thanks man, but I'm just happy knowing that my life as a cautionary tale can save some other poor sap from a similar fate. Sort of like getting a face tattoo, maybe it's only reason for existence is to prevent some fool from getting one.

In reply to GameboyRMH: "EX" wife. Divorce is expensive.

KyAllroad wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

KyAllroad wrote: LASIK. Hands down the best thing ever. Bookended interestingly by another cosmetic surgery. The worst investment, by miles, was boobs for the wife. That one cost me high six figures all told.

that story still makes me genuinely sad for your situation.

Thanks man, but I'm just happy knowing that my life as a cautionary tale can save some other poor sap from a similar fate. Sort of like getting a face tattoo, maybe it's only reason for existence is to prevent some fool from getting one.

In order to better illustrate your misfortune and in an effort to help others recognize and avoid a similar fate, you should post photographs of this bad investment. For the public good, of course.

House, paid it off 15 years ago but it was a cheap, fixer-upper. I didn't have to move and it came w/ a 2.5 car garage.

CPAP like Tuna said. Best quality of life improvement.

MRI after insurance would not pay for it. Maybe the gym membership after that.

Money wise GOOGL on open, same with the house. ~400K+ up in value in the last 2.4 years according to the appraisal that we just had to do the refi.

KyAllroad wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

KyAllroad wrote: LASIK. Hands down the best thing ever. Bookended interestingly by another cosmetic surgery. The worst investment, by miles, was boobs for the wife. That one cost me high six figures all told.

that story still makes me genuinely sad for your situation.

Thanks man, but I'm just happy knowing that my life as a cautionary tale can save some other poor sap from a similar fate. Sort of like getting a face tattoo, maybe it's only reason for existence is to prevent some fool from getting one.

In the 10^5 range, those must have been some HONKIN' hooters. So to speak.

I must have missed that thread. Is this like the infamous Amy thread? Gone forever but not forgotten?

A recent Best Buy: Video driver circuit on my "talk to the cars" laptop, a Dell D610, started going out. White streaks across the top of the screen, sometimes blanking out the whole thing. $40 delivered for a D610 on (GRM Advertiser) eBay with 3x the RAM, no hard drive or battery. 2 screws and 5 minutes and the drive and battery are swapped over. Easiest computer upgrade/repair EVAR. No OS install to go through and my Toyota talk to the car program and Megasquirt stuff is there, ready to go.

My divorce. 3 cars, 100k or better, and an impending 13 years of child support are worth the train wreck she's turning into.

The one month of Match.com was well worth it for me, although I only used it for about 5 days. 5 years together, married 4 next month, two kids, and a farmette. Plus she wants me to turbocharge the Renault! I win!

The money to the hospital for the birth of my daughter.

Seconded closely by the 10 bucks on the marriage liscence (spent before the daughter by years)

Third would be my $89 flux core welder. That tool changed my life.

I think my metal lathe is right up there with Best Money Spent, Evar. I have fixed more things with that, from toilets to Mercedes.

The talk around the table that summer was a shop or a Lotus Elise. With hindsight, I have no doubt that I made the right choice.

CPAP for sure. If a doctor even so much as floats the idea to you, go for it.

Aside from that, I'd say travel. Any of it. All of it.

My A&P certificate.

It doesn't matter how bad the economy gets someone is always hiring mechanics because that work is really really hard to ship overseas. Especially if they're small aircraft, regional jets, or military.

I can't say the same for my IT or my Project Management degrees.

I would vote for my CPAP but The Wife says my life insurance policy.

JG Pasterjak wrote: CPAP for sure. If a doctor even so much as floats the idea to you, go for it.

Love hate relationship with that thing. But emphasis on the Hate word...

Yes it gives me better sleep. But I cant fall asleep with the berkeleying thing on my face so I have to stay up to 1 am so that I am dead on my feet when I plug the damn thing on my face and hit the pillow. I wake up at 6. So I now get 5 hours of sleep without the apnea.

Tried for a year to take sleeping pills around 10 so that I could "Ease into the thing" but all that did was make me dependent on sleeping pills for a while. No thanks.

My wife flat out berkeleying loves the thing. Go figure.

I like my Cpap, and get to sleep much more easily. I think one of the weird bonuses is that I can concentrate on the air and breathing and white noise instead of ex-wives and work trouble and thieves and vandals...

Every dime I have spent since I started working at 16.

Picking one thing would be impossible, it would depend on what I'm doing at the moment. An hour ago, it was SanFord, as I was backing him into the yard. 30 minutes later it was the new bus, as I was studying how to charge the rear A/C system. A week ago, it was the tire machine. Tonight, it will be the mattress I bought a couple of years ago.

It's pouring right now, so I guess right now, it's the roof I put on the house last year.

The $400 Honda 550-4 I bought in college. Rode if for 2 years, sold it for $600.00. Pretty much this exact bike

EDIT: Sold it to help fund my wife's engagement ring, which also turned out to be money well spent.

No question. Vasectomy.

Somewhat close second; $50 Logan lathe Yep, it works. Bittersweet thing, though. I bought it from a high school that was shutting down their shop program. Got a 6' drill press for an additional $50.

I've been thinking about this all day and am drawing a complete blank.

Nick (Bo) Comstock wrote: I've been thinking about this all day and am drawing a complete blank.

You got to meet me, and got a beer! That's gotta be worth a few bucks.